By Matt Chaban 12/06/12 4:10pm

Skyscraper Living

Bound for the heavens. (432park.com)

Watch New York’s Tallest Building, 432 Park Avenue, Rise in Real-Time on a Secret Sky Cam Site

The condo tower rising at 432 Park Avenue may be the most fascinating development project in the city. Sure, it can boast of being the tallest building rising in the city at the moment, to an eventual height of 1,397 feet (29 feet higher than the roof of 1 World Trade Center). It is also set to be the most expensive. But even more so, it is the secrecy of the building’s developers, CIM Group and Harry Macklowe, that make the project all the more intriguing.

Very few details about the project have been released, and none of them publicly. Even renderings are clandestine. Which is why it is amazing that not one or even two but three different skycams have been whirring away at the site for the past year, showing it off in real-time, free for anyone to look—except that no one thought to. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/05/12 11:53am

Dizzying Designs

Hello Midtown.

Just How Crazy Will New York’s Tallest New Building Be? The 432 Park Avenue Pics You’ve Been Waiting For

Last week, The Journal got its hands on a 67-page marketing packet for Harry Macklowe and CIM’s soaring tower at 432 Park Avenue, the former Drake Hotel site where the developers are working on the tallest tower in the entire city, apartment or otherwise.

In their write-up, Journal journalist Eliot Brown and Craig Karmin mentioned that inside the packet “are a collection of striking images of what would be the tallest residential tower in the U.S. at 1,395 feet as well as a number of other interesting factoids about the tower, called 432 Park.”

Those factoids are below, but what obviously whet The Observer‘s appetite most was the promise of “striking images” (we have a thing for those) that were sadly absent from The Journal‘s report. But no more. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/19/11 11:15am

Love the Drake!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's 432 Park Avenue! (WSJ)

Drake Tower Will Not Top Empire State Building, Still Tallest Apartment Tower Ever

In July, renderings of the most watched development site in the city leaked out. They were unofficial, the work of some avid architecture geeks, but it turns out the designs of the condo-tower planned for the Drake Hotel site were not that far off. The Journal gets the first official look at CIM, Harry Macklowe and Rafael Viñoly’s new project, and while it will not rise to 1,420 feet, as first expected, the 1,300-foot tower would surpass every apartment building in the city by a few hundred feet. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/24/11 11:32am

Love the Drake!

10 Photos

That is tall.

Harry Macklowe, CIM and Viñoly Planning 1,420-Foot Toothpick Tower on Park Avenue?

For years now, the Drake Hotel site at the corner of 57th Street and Park Avenue has been one of the most closely watched developments in the city. A historic hotel was destroyed to make way for a mystery project that has grown all the more intriguing as it actually looks like it might get built. Mysterious California developer CIM teamed up with Harry Macklowe, the site’s former owner and fifth-act maestro, and now details are dribbling out that make for some jaw-dropping possibilities. Read More

By Matt Chaban 7/27/11 3:11pm

Starchitects

He uses those glasses to get a view of the stage. (Getty)

Viñoly Vanquishes Opera

Rafael Viñoly is known for his dramatic buildings, which in New York include the boomeranging Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the controversial New Domino housing development on the Williamsburg waterfront. The Urguay-born, New York-based Mr. Viñoly also has a thing for real drama, that of the stage, reports Observer opera critic Zachary Woolfe—even if at the same time, in his difficult way, the architect criticizes his multifarious colleagues: Read More

By Staff 3/09/06 4:47pm

Vinoly’s Philadelphia Story Ends

The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and its architect, Rafael Vinoly, reached a settlement this week that ended an ugly and public legal battle in which the managers of the concert hall accused the designer of doing shoddy work that lead the construction to balloon $23 million over budget.

Peter Dobrin, who has been writing Read More